President Obama threatened today to veto Texas Rep. Lamar Smith’s two measures for reforming the regulatory process, saying the bills would hinder agencies from issuing regulations that protect the public.

In policy statements late this afternoon, the White House said the bills “would impede the ability of agencies to provide the public with basic protections, and create needless confusion and delay that would prove disruptive for businesses, as well as for state, tribal and local governments.”

The two bills fronted by Smith, R-San Antonio, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, are expected to come to a vote on the House floor sometime this week.

They represent Republicans’ latest efforts to slow down what they view as regulatory overreach by the Obama administration during a weak economic recovery.

One of the bills, the Regulatory Accountability Act, would require agencies to study costs and benefits associated with potential alternatives to proposed rules. Agencies would then usually have to pick the least costly option, according to House Judiciary Committee Republicans. The bill also would expand judicial powers to review agency decisions on rules.

The Regulatory Flexibility Improvements Act would require agencies to come up with rule alternatives that reduce costs to small businesses.

Most public controversy has centered on the Regulatory Accountability Act.

Smith shot back at the White House late Monday, saying that the bill “restores accountability by ensuring openness and transparency in the regulatory process and by requiring regulators to select the least costly alternative to regulations when appropriate.”

“The President’s obstinate opposition to this bipartisan, bicameral bill is unacceptable,” Smith said in a statement to Texas on the Potomac. Sens. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, and Mark Pryor, D-Ark., are fronting a companion bill in the Senate.

Dozens of business groups ranging from the American Petroleum Institute, a Washington-based oil-and-gas trade group, to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a Washington-based business group, support the bill. They threw their backing behind the bill in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee in September.

The bill would ensure that regulations are “narrowly tailored, supported by strong and credible data and evidence, impose the least burden possible, while still implementing Congressional intent,” the groups wrote.

Some opponents such as the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group based in New York, have said the Regulatory Accountability Act would “grind the government to a permanent halt” by requiring agencies to perform cost-benefit analyses for any alternatives someone suggests for a proposed rule.

That would tie up the agencies for years with “impossible analysis” and endanger their ability to implement regulations that for instance regulate disposal of toxic coal ash, said Scott Slesinger, legislative director for NRDC.

The bill’s provision to expand judicial power to review agency rulemakings would invite frivolous lawsuits and replace regulators’ decisions on complex matters of science and policy with a judge’s, Slesinger contends.

A group of law professors also has pressed lawmakers to reject the bill.

“We seriously doubt that agencies would be able to respond to delegations of rulemaking authority or to congressional mandates to issue rules if this bill were to be enacted,” the professors wrote to the House Judiciary Committee in late October. “Instead it would likely lead to rulemaking avoidance by agencies.”

Smith maintained his bill “will not stop federal agencies from issuing needed regulations. But it will stop them from imposing unjustified regulatory costs on America’s job creators.”